Dr Achmet: ‘Quack and Fraud’ or Benefactor of Eighteenth-Century Dublin?

Abstract

The commercial baths on Bachelor’s Walk in Dublin run by ‘Dr’ Achmet Borumbadad throughout the 1770s, if celebrated, tend to be treated as evidence of Achmet’s chicanery and of his powerful supporters’ gullibility. However, the bath complex can be defended as an innovative project to improve Dubliners’ health. The mysteries around Achmet’s origins (apparently in Ireland) and his showmanship have meant that the enterprise and its director have often been suspected of fraud. Yet the published records of those treated at the baths suggest that they – uniquely – supplied a much-needed want. In addition to the baths, Achmet was involved in another project intended to benefit the laborious of Dublin. Through the British ambassador in Spain, he hoped to develop a trade in Irish poplins. After a promising start, the plan foundered. By the 1780s, Achmet faced mounting financial problems, only resolved when the baths were swept away by the Wide Streets commission. His subsequent career is largely unknown, but intertwined with that of his wife, Catherine. Mrs Achmet had some success as an actor in both Ireland and England while theatricality marked her husband’s methods. The episodes demonstrate opportunism on Achmet’s part, credulity among some of his backers, but also contributed to public health, fashionable conviviality, and prospectively to useful employment in later eighteenth-century Dublin.